Something really weird happened today.
I went running. That’s not the weird bit, though Mom was definitely surprised. She tried to convince me to carry a laminar, but I wanted to run in the rain. As luck would have it, it barely drizzled. I was practically dry as a bone when I hit the seaface. The Shivchandra was deserted at the time, it was early enough and the work curfews hadn't been lifted yet.
Midway through the run, I stopped because I was running out of breath. So I sat down on the marble walls facing the sea. My mask was one of the new ones, you can wear them running, and it even filters out most unpleasant smells, so I couldn’t smell the usual stink at all.
I was thinking of you. Do you remember going there as kids? You would always dare me to jump off into the rocks, and I was always arguing that the rocks were actually golems which would come alive to protect the city if needed, and they would probably kill me if they caught me. I still wanted to jump though, wanted to see if it was true, back then.
Funny, that that is the memory that came to be in my head today.
I sat there for a while, music in my ears. The rain increased in intensity a bit but then it went back to gently buffeting the pavement. When I eventually started running again, there were a few other people there. Mostly old folks who have probably lived on Samudraneel since before the New Partition.
I kept running the length of the Shivchandra till I finally made it to Nar-Nari Point. They have recently renovated the statue there, it’s a copper coloured monstrosity, both the man and the woman on either side of the statue are really ugly and they have no earthly resemblance to any human beings. Maybe that was the point. The only thing moving this far south on the seashore was an iCleaner drone doing some kind of routine maintenance. It sensed me but it didn’t warn me to back away so I kept going all the way past the statue to the bit where the promenade sort of melts into the sea. None of the potential golems there. Maybe that is why what happened next, happened there.
I remember most of it with crystal clarity, but I think I’m...I’m worried that I am forgetting some of it already so I’m going to put down as much as I can, in as much detail as I can.
The sea ahead of me began to churn, and I am not kidding, it was legitimately churning. Some sort of vortex struck up in the depths just a little further from where I was. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t say anything. Then something swam out of that dark whirlpool.
I wish I could describe it, but I wouldn’t be able to do justice. It was black as night, I could feel it suck up the light around it. Bulbous eyes and some sort of proboscis hanging from its head, it sloshed and shivered onto the promenade. It had webbed hands and webbed feet. The proboscis was...it was shaking, shivering, and then it turned, it turned its head right at me. Its big black eyes, there were no eyelids, no eyeballs, but I knew it was looking right at me. There was a sort of scream, and then, klaxons behind me.
The drone had spotted the damn thing and was issuing warnings. It shifted its focus back to the drone. In its hand, fin, whatever, it had a sort of... long stick. It moved it up, pointed at the drone, screamed something unintelligible and the stick lit up, blazed in the rain. It looked like power went out of it and hit the drone. The drone sparked and fell straight to the ground. The screaming was dull and distant and it took a while for me to realise that the screaming was me, it was my voice, and the thing was looking at me again. I mumbled a prayer under my breath, hoping against hope, and thankfully the ethereal network caught it. The Devi I had strapped to my thigh in a waterproof cover, buzzed and blinked. A goddess appeared at my side.
(I dunno if you have Devis, they are usually kind of helpful. Mom says we shouldn’t use Devis because He wouldn’t approve, so I try not to, not too much, but I was really thankful that I had one with me.)
Saraswati, resplendent in all her glory, stood there, even though her form kept flickering because of the droplets occluding the Devi.
“Do you want to switch your default language to Hindi?” Saraswati offered, as always. I said no, as always. She seemed disappointed, as always.
The thing was walking towards me now, seawater dripping off it.
“What is THAT!?” I screamed at Saraswati, pointing at the black beast.
Saraswati’s eyes went white, as she scanned the thing. It was raising the stick at me now. I started to step back, trying to put distance between myself and the creature. Saraswati moved with me, anchored to the Devi.
“Matsya, this is a matsya, proceed with extreme caution.” I turned to see that Saraswati’s eyes had gone ruby red, and she wasn’t looking at me or the creature anymore. She was looking at the Nar-Nari statue.
The fucking thing moved, Leo, the golem moved. The creature was focussed on me, but it had to have heard the twisting and groaning of copper behind it. It pointed one outstretched palm at the thing, and shot a beam straight at the beast. It was blown back towards me, the stick flew out of its hand and landed at my feet.
It lay there, smoking and charred and coughing and dying and I couldn’t help myself, I had to go see. It looked at me, not with its bulbous eyes, they seemed deflated somehow, but it had...human eyes inside, I think. It looked at me and pushed the stick towards me. It seemed to have shrunk and seemed largely unaffected by the blast. The creature reached for me, I recoiled, but it didn’t do anything more. And then, it said something and the words appeared fully formed, in my head, even though it’s been years.
In a guttural voice it said,
“Je ne suis pas le dernier.
D'autres arrivent.”
Saraswati started to glow red and issue warnings about detecting foreign languages. I shut the Devi off. A few seconds later it was all over. The thing had sputtered its last. iCleaner drones were already on the scene milling around, cleaning up the mess, brushing over the scoring from the blast on the promenade. Everything was good as new soon enough. By the time another actual person got there, I had sort of buried the whole thing. I refused help, refused to make a statement, and walked back home.
I think I’m still in shock though, it’s only real when I put it down in pixels. I didn’t tell anyone at home, but I needed to talk about it and I’m hoping that if this ever finds you, you and I don’t get into trouble for what’s written in it. If you ever read this.
Hope you’re well, wherever you are. I miss you, Mom misses you. Dad is rarely conscious these days but I’m sure he misses you too.
Love
N
PS: I don’t know why, but I kept the stick